・119.0 Some young people are fleeing …
次の英文を読んで、後の問いに答えなさい。*印のついている語句に関しては、本文の後にまとめて注があります。
(a)Some young people are fleeing the urban jungle for the half-abandoned countryside on a mission to make farming cool again and cut Japan’s frightening food deficit in the process. Organic farming converts*, rice-growing Tokyo fashionistas* and other young green thumbs* have trickled* back to rural Japan, where many farm towns have been slowly dying amid the fast-graying demographic* crunch*.
Japan imports 60 percent of its food and many worry about future food security if climate change rocks global food supplies or energy costs swing international grain prices.
(b)In a high-tech country that grew rich on selling cars and electronics, the young farmers are standing up to reinvent the image of agriculture.
No matter how big Japan’s economy is, no matter how much cash it stacks* up, this country will soon be unable to buy so much food from overseas,” Yusuke Miyaji, 31, recently told a crowd of young farmers.
“I want to make a job in the primary sector* cool, striking and profitable,” Miyaji, dressed in overalls, said to applause. “Kids should dream of becoming farmers, not baseball players.”
Miyaji, who comes from a pig farming family, has created a network called Kosegare, a word meaning farmer’s son, that has attracted more than 200 young farmers and supporters who share (c)his sense of crisis.
“(d)The time left for us to revamp* this industry is probably about five years,” Miyaji warned his squad* of youthful activist farmers.
Under his program, the produce* is marketed under the network’s Refarm brand. Members share information on organic farming, and urge supportive consumers to buy directly from them to cut distribution and commission costs.
Encouraged by the movement, Kaori Nukui, 31, who joined her parents last year to grow green tea and shiitake, said that after years in the city she saw a business opportunity in family farming.
“I had no interest before in taking over (e)this business,” said Nukui, who had worked for Tokyo consulting and public relations companies for seven years, as she drove a pickup truck* to a mushroom house in Iruma, Saitama Prefecture.
“My mother also wanted me to marry a businessman rather than work the land,” she said. “But when I thought of starting a business myself, I realized my parents had built a good foundation for me.”
Data show Japan’s farming population is quickly aging, and many farm households have no working heir* as the birthrate has fallen and children leave country towns for the bright city lights.
More than 70 percent of Japan’s working farmers are aged 60 or older and nearly half are over 70. Only 8.5 percent are aged 39 or younger.
About 3,800 sq. km* of farmland have been abandoned and laid waste* throughout the nation. In 88 percent of the cases, the owners said they were too old to work the fields.
Japan, which kept its food self-sufficiency ratio above 70 percent in the late 1960s, produces only 40 percent of its food, and buys almost all its wheat, corn and soybeans from overseas.
Seeing the dire* situation of farmers, even girls with trendy hairstyles and long, painted fingernails in Tokyo’s fashionable Shibuya shopping district have jumped onto the rural bandwagon*.
Shiho Fujita, a 24-year-od singer, music producer and model, is leading a squad of “gal” farmers who have cultivated rice in the countryside, and dishes out* advice in her blog on growing zucchini* and tomatoes.
“It may be difficult for gals and young people to start farming instantly,” she writes. “But if the agro-industry* becomes more exciting by young people joining it, then Japan’s farming will definitely change. And (f)I think Japan needs it.”
--- from Harumi Ozawa, “Farming Fashionable for Some Young People,” The Japan Times Weekly (November 7, 2009).
convert 転向者 fashionista 最新ファッションを追う人 green thumb 植物をうまく育てる才能（をもつ人） trickle 少しずつ行く（来る） demographic 人口の crunch 危機 stack 積む primary sector 第一次産業部門 revamp 改革する、変革する squad 一団 produce 農産物 pickup truck 小型トラック heir 後継者 sq. km 平方キロメートル lay waste 荒廃させる dire 悲惨な、恐ろしい jump onto the bandwagon 時流に乗る dish out 流す、提供する zucchini ズッキーニ angro-industry 農業関連産業
問１ 下線部(a)を日本語に訳しなさい。
問２ 下線部(b)を日本語に訳しなさい。
問３ 下線部(c)の“his sense of crisis”とはどのようなものですか。具体的に日本語で述べなさい。
問４ 下線部(d)には、「農業改革を５年ほどで急いでやる必要がある」と述べられています。Miyajiが農業改革のために実施したことを日本語でまとめなさい。
問５ 下線部(e)の“this business”とは何ですか。具体的に日本語で書きなさい。
問６ 日本の農作物の自給率はこの40年あまりでどのように変わりましたか。また、その原因は何ですか。日本語で述べなさい。
問７ 下線部(f)において、Shiho Fujitaは何が日本に必要だと言っていますか。日本語で簡潔に述べなさい。
